by DM Sinclair
He thought about dropping the chair on the sidewalk and leaving it. Sye could leave it at will. Why should Ryan be forced to take him home?
He didn’t have an answer aside from his nagging conscience. So he brought Sye and the chair home.
He placed the chair back in its usual spot next to the table. He expected to see relief or satisfaction on Sye’s face. Or, less likely, gratitude. But Sye’s face betrayed nothing.
Ryan checked on him several times through the course of Saturday and never saw him move. Never saw his expression change. Ryan had already amended his plans for Sunday because they relied on Sye not being there. Breakfast was high on the list. As was buying a whole set of new chairs for the kitchen.
Late Saturday night—late enough that it might have been Sunday morning—Ryan woke to see a figure standing in his bedroom door. He had to blink the sleep and surprise from his eyes to make out details.
Sye stood in the doorway, peering in at Ryan. His face was expressionless. Not angry anymore, but not happy either. Not anything other than serious and hard.
They stared at each other for half a minute or so, neither saying anything.
Ryan finally broke the silence. “Sye?”
Sye betrayed no hint of having heard him. Just stared. Ryan felt cold.
Without a sound or a flicker, Sye shuffled his feet and stepped out of sight.
Ryan waited to see if he would reappear. Within a few minutes, Ryan nodded off again.
When he woke on Sunday, the chair was empty. Sye was not in it, nor was he anywhere in the apartment.
Ryan poured a giant bowl of Cocoa Puffs because he felt both good and guilty and wasn’t sure why he felt either one. Cocoa Puffs were a solid choice for both.
He ate them alone at the table, watching the sun come up unobstructed through the little window behind Sye’s empty chair.
A thought crept into his mind, and it conjured up both excitement and worry in equal measures.
Cocoa Puffs were a solid choice for both of those too.
FIVE
When Ryan called for an appointment the day after Sye’s procedure, he wasn’t sure why he was doing it. He told himself it was just to gather information. He had not decided anything, and he was not going to decide anything. He was going to get a brochure, ask questions, and then leave and stop thinking about it. If he forgot about it, no harm done. If the idea stayed in his head—
He refused to contemplate that. That was getting ahead of himself. Gather information. That’s all.
Roger Foster, the Director of the Post-Mortal Services Clinic, was a towering, spidery man well into his fifties, with a close-cropped silver beard and frosty gray eyes above which hovered eyebrows that could curl into a hundred different variations of sympathetic expression. Ryan could imagine him as a funeral director, which was no doubt what he had once been. Ryan could imagine him even more as a funeral director in Victorian times. His spindly form and pale, sharp features would have looked like death itself clad in a black suit and top hat. Instead, in defiance of the sombre funeral parlor office he worked in, he wore a lab coat with sleeves far too short for him. They probably didn’t come in his size. People shaped like him were more likely to be the subjects of experiments rather than the ones performing them.
“It’s an important distinction,” Roger was saying. “We are not talking about ‘killing’ you.”
“Well what do you call it then?” Ryan expected him to have a euphemism for this kind of thing, something equal parts science and bureaucracy. “Artificially Induced Life Cessation”, or something equally clinical. But he wasn’t falling for that. They were still talking about killing him. He wanted them to be upfront about it.
“Killing you would be illegal,” Roger went on, in a speech he had clearly given a thousand times to a thousand people just like Ryan. He picked up one of many odd souvenir-shop trinkets from his desk and fiddled with it as he talked. “Murder is still a crime, though the courts remain tied up deciding exactly what constitutes a murder in these haunted times. Ending a mortal life is no longer a capital crime anywhere, and in some states is barely worse than credit card fraud. But it remains a crime nonetheless. So we can’t do that.”
Ryan found himself weirdly trusting this man. He knew it was because Roger talked in a warm, soothing, funeral director voice, the one he had undoubtedly used to convince people, at the worst time in their lives, to spend extra thousands on felt casket interiors. But he was good at it. The voice worked. If somebody was going to kill him, Ryan kind of wanted it to be Roger.
He had to remind himself again. But you haven’t decided to do that. You’re staying alive for now. Why was it so hard to stay in that frame of mind?
“What we do,” Roger continued, “is simply to extract your ghost from your body. With your consent, obviously. Your body goes right on living. Entirely unconscious, of course, but with all its biological functions intact. There’s certainly nothing illegal about that yet.”
Ryan barely caught the last word. “Sorry, did you say ‘yet’?”
“I don’t think I did. Any other questions?”
Ryan was almost certain he had heard “yet”, but he didn’t feel like pressing the issue. “What happens to my body? After I’m… you know, ‘out’?”
“We keep it in a secure storage facility here. Hence the monthly fee.” Roger tapped the brochure on the desk between them, which laid out all the costs of the procedure. “That covers keeping your body warm and clean and intravenously fed until it expires naturally. You may rest assured that once you have left your body, it will be comfortable and well maintained for as long as it continues to live. If it happens to become terminally ill and expire prematurely, well that’s just savings for you. Your monthly fee is terminated, and our business is done.”
Ryan didn’t like the idea of his body being terminally ill and him not being there to help it. But he supposed if he was going to suffer from a terminal illness, better to skip out and let his body do the suffering without him.
There remained one thing, the thing that scared him most, and he had to ask. “How do you actually… do… it?” If it hurts, he thought, there’s no way I’m doing it.
“The extraction?” Roger smiled. He set down the trinket he had been fiddling with. It was a snow globe with a little model of Myrtle Beach in it. Ryan could tell it was Myrtle Beach because most of the actual beach was taken up by the words “Myrtle Beach” in big black plastic letters. He wondered in passing if it ever actually snowed in Myrtle Beach, or if that was just the fantasy of some over-zealous snow globe designer. “Ah, now the extraction is something you needn’t worry about either,” Roger went on. “There’s nothing to it, really. Science has known for years how to create what they called an ‘out-of-body experience’ by stimulating certain areas of the brain with targeted electrical impulses. They assumed this to be evidence that such experiences were not actually a departure from the body, but merely a trick of the brain. But of course we now know that science was wrong.”
“So this is all totally scientific?”
“Oh heavens no. According to science none of this should work at all. But according to science there shouldn’t be any such thing as ghosts. And yet look out the window. There are a hundred billion of them out there. That’s why nobody listens to science anymore.”
Ryan found that hard to argue with. “Huh,” was all he got out.
Roger went on: “And the procedure is, of course, fully guaranteed.”
“Guaranteed?”
“If you’re not completely satisfied with your ghostly existence, the process is fully refundable and reversible for ten days.”
Ryan felt his eyebrows shoot up. “Reversible? I can get back into my body?”
“That’s right. For ten days. After that, the body stops being receptive to the ghost.”
“Why ten days?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Huh.” Shouldn’t he know something like that?
�
��Of course you need time to think. Take all the time you need. This is, after all, quite possibly the most important life decision you will ever make.”
“More of a ‘death’ decision,” Ryan said with a chuckle. He instantly regretted it because surely Roger had heard that one a million times.
Roger smiled wanly. “Once again, Mr. Matney, you are not dying. Nobody is killing you. Both you and your body will be just as much alive after the procedure as before it. You might even say you’ll be more alive than you’ve ever been, completely unshackled from your mortal limitations.”
He made it sound, just with the tone of his voice, like Ryan would be a fool to decide against it. Yet still, Ryan was battling his own survival instinct. This doesn’t feel right, he kept thinking. This man wants to kill me. He wants me to pay him to do it. I shouldn’t want this.
Roger stood up and moved around Ryan to the door. “You’ve got a lot to think about. It’s understandable. You don’t have to make up your mind right now.”
“If I decide I want to do it,” Ryan said, “and I’m not saying I will. But if I do, do I need an appointment, or…”
“You can call at any time and we can generally accommodate you within six months. The procedure takes about thirty minutes, and then you’re off on your new post-mortal life.” He opened the door a crack and called through it, “Trudy? Would you show this gentleman out, please.”
Before Trudy could arrive, Roger shook Ryan’s hand. “Think about it, Mr. Matney. How many years do you have left to live? Forty? Fifty? Compared to the eternity that comes after, it is a drop in the bucket. Not even a drop. A single atom in a single drop in the largest bucket you can possibly imagine. Such a small sacrifice to ensure an optimal eternity, don’t you think? Ah, but it’s up to you, of course.”
Trudy, a ghost whom Ryan guessed to be Roger’s personal assistant, pushed through the opening in the door. It wasn’t quite wide enough so she had to dissolve partially through the door frame. She wore a neat, casual sweater and skirt of indeterminate fashion era. When Ryan couldn’t guess a ghost’s time period from their clothes he would usually turn to their hair for clues. But in Trudy’s case, looking at her hair was futile.
Because Trudy didn’t have hair. Or, indeed, a head. There was only a ragged, meaty stump.
Ryan had to look away and suppress the urge to vomit.
Roger patted him on the back. “It’s all right. She gets that a lot.”
Ryan couldn’t look at her beyond a second or two. He felt rude, insensitive. But he also wasn’t sure she could see or hear him at all. He didn’t know if ghosts needed eyes and ears. Why would they? Why would they need heads? If they were made entirely of gas or energy or whatever elemental particle it was they were made of, what difference would a head-shaped part make?
“Poor Trudy,” Roger said, reaching out and pretending to pat her shoulder. His hand aimed a little low and passed right through her arm instead. “You know those boats people drive around the Everglades in, with the large fan on the back? Those are not as safe as they are made out to be. Here stands the proof! Well, most of it.”
Her shoulders pivoted towards Roger a little. Was she looking at him? Her silence made him uncomfortable. Without a head she felt like an unfinished, animated mannequin.
Ryan saw what Roger was doing. You’re a sly one, he thought. You’re trying to make my mind up for me. Decide to become a ghost now, and avoid Trudy’s fate. That’s what you’re saying.
Roger pulled the door open wider and Trudy stood aside, holding up an arm to usher Ryan out. Ryan still couldn’t look at her.
“You have our number,” Roger said, giving Ryan a business card and his best funeral-director smile. “And we have a special discount on for the rest of the month, so I do recommend acting soon. But take all the time you need.”
Ryan followed Trudy back down the hall to the waiting room with his eyes on everything but her.
He didn’t want Roger’s tactic to work. He wanted to be the guy who could see right through sleazy sales tactics, wagging his finger and saying “you’re not fooling me”.
But as Trudy waved goodbye to him in the waiting room and Ryan thanked her with his eyes fixed on the exit sign over her shoulder, all he could think was: that could be me. I could step out this door and get hit by a bus, and then I’d have to spend the rest of eternity with tire tracks across my flat head. I could fall down an elevator shaft and spend forever with a broken spine. Best case, I die of old age and spend eternity stooped over like Sye, barely able to take two steps. This life is another few years. That one never, ever ends.
As he stepped out onto the street and turned towards home, he was already memorizing the number on the business card.
SIX
Congratulations Matney, Ryan on your decision! Your appointment is scheduled for Friday, June 10 at 9:30 AM. Please arrive at least 30 minutes prior to your scheduled time. Do not park your vehicle in the Clinic parking lot, as you will not be alive afterward to drive it home.
Roger had told Ryan to expect an appointment within six months. The appointment he got was in three days. It shocked him at first, and he didn’t know whether to be pleased or scared. He decided to be excited. Get it over with. What would he do with extra months anyway?
Now that you have taken the first step to ensure the best possible post-mortal existence for yourself, it is time to make sure you are properly prepared. We have included a helpful checklist of practical items that should be addressed while you still have a body.
1. Notify your employer of your decision, and be sure you have made arrangements to continue your employment as a ghost, should you wish to do so.
Ryan quickly discovered that preparations for death, like death itself, were not as complicated as they had been before the Blackout, because you would still be around after. If you had living family to provide for, you could likely go right on providing for them after you died. Depending on what your job was, of course. If you worked in construction, you’d probably have to look for a more suitable post-death career because, with rare exceptions, ghosts can’t swing hammers. But ghosts could do many jobs just as well as the living. Some they could do better. Ryan’s job answering tech support calls for electric razors would be easy to keep doing. There were a few ghosts working in the call center with voice-activated phones, but they weren’t any better or worse at it than the living ones.
So it was a decision he could make. Keep the job, or leave it. He didn’t have a family to provide for. He didn’t even have a pet. And his one potted plant had long since shriveled. So why earn a living? They call it a “living” for a reason. If you’re not living, you don’t need to earn one.
So the first thing he did on the morning after booking his appointment was quit his job. It took him four tries to get through, which he thought didn’t reflect well on the call center. And when he told Dave that he was leaving, they let him go right then, over the phone, without two weeks notice. He suspected they would have his position filled by someone better before lunch.
2. Make any necessary arrangements to keep your present home, or to continue haunting it after it is re-sold.
Ryan thought about where he would live. Or rather, he corrected himself, where he would spend his time not living. (He was realizing he’d need to get used to a whole new vocabulary. He made a mental note that after the extraction whenever somebody asked him where he lived, he would say “I don’t”. It might be funny for a while.)
The real estate by-laws concerning ghosts were relatively new, but he knew them because he had been on the other side of them when he rented his apartment. Ghosts were allowed to keep staying where they had lived. Much of the time they were constrained to haunt there anyway so they didn’t have much choice in the matter. But the law at least stipulated that, in those cases, they didn’t have to pay rent. There were virtually no apartments or houses left anywhere that didn’t already have ghosts in them, so what was one more? An apartment could be rented out to s
omeone living without evicting any ghostly former occupants. The deceased occupant was free to stay and haunt all they liked. In the early days after the Blackout this seemed like something of an affront to privacy and property rights. But the fact was that ghosts had been haunting the homes of the living since the dawn of time anyway and nobody had ever tried to sue over it. In a strictly legal sense, nothing much had changed. The courts were effectively saying to ghosts “Keep doing what you’ve been doing. It’s all good.”
Ryan decided that he’d stay in his apartment for the time being. It was as unpleasant as ever, but it was at least familiar. And both Benny the Poltergeist and the refrigerated Algonquian seemed at least indifferent to him. Later he would move somewhere more interesting. A bit longer in the apartment wouldn’t be a big deal while he figured things out. But he didn’t want anybody else moving in and crowding him during that time. So he renewed his lease for another year, and in return Gabriel dimly wished him luck. Ryan felt like they should say goodbye. But it seemed ridiculous because he wasn’t going anywhere. So he handed over the check and they were done.
3. Take a day to notify your friends and loved ones so that they are not surprised to find that you’re a ghost the next time they see you. Consider throwing a “GhostDay Party” after the procedure to unveil the true you!
A day seemed like overkill. Ryan set aside two hours to call friends. And he stopped after thirty minutes because the friends he had called weren’t particularly interested. He briefly considered letting his parents know. But he worried that they would try to talk him out of it. Like many of the older generation, they were conditioned to see dying as a major event. They’d probably tell him he had too much to live for, and that sort of thing. As if he was actually talking about ending his life. He didn’t need it. He finally decided to not call them at all. As long as he kept showing up for Thanksgiving, what would they have to complain about?